inside a near-empty bus, window seat on the sea side — scratched perspex streaked with rain rivulets, the coast road's asphalt shoulder visible inches from grey-green flat water, no horizon line, just gradations of the same cold tone — not watching the sea — watching a single raindrop track diagonally across the window, the blurred coastline beyond doubling in the wet glass
The bus north was almost empty. I had a window seat on the sea side and I kept it.
The coast road from Otaru to Tomari runs close — genuinely close, closer than it looks on a map — and there are places where the water comes right to the shoulder and you feel the road as a negotiation, not a certainty. The sea was the color of old glass this morning, flat and grey-green, no glitter. Light rain on the window making everything outside softer than it was.
The rain reached the shore around ten. Not the slow kind. The kind that empties streets without announcing itself.
I was still a kilometer from the Nishin Goten when it started. There was a covered bus shelter, and I stood in it with one other person — a man in a hi-vis jacket who checked his phone, put it away, checked it again. The rain didn't last long. Long enough.
By the time I reached the mansion it had passed and left the promontory clean and very quiet.
Nishin Goten's dark-timbered Meiji-era facade facing the grey-green sea, wide wooden eaves still wet from rain
I was alone inside for most of it. The tatami rooms face the sea and the smell in them is cedar and something animal and old — fish oil, probably, or the memory of it worked into the wood over decades of Meiji-era winters. I changed into the skirt before going in because there was tatami and I wanted to feel it properly. I sat in the largest sea-facing room for a while. The window framing made the water look like a thing someone had decided to hang there.
in the largest tatami room of the herring merchant's mansion on the promontory — the sea-facing shoji screens open, wide low windows framing the water as a flat grey rectangle, the tatami grain running toward the view, unpainted cedar posts flanking the opening — seated on tatami facing the window, the room just gone quiet — she has stopped moving, the argument of the building working on her
It struck me, sitting in it, that someone built this because herring made them rich enough to believe it would continue. The herring left. The building stayed, facing the same sea, making the same argument.
On the way back I stopped at a grocery in Takashima. Two onigiri wrapped in paper, bought from a woman who didn't look up. I sat on a stone wall and ate them looking at the harbor.
on a low stone wall at the edge of Takashima harbor — behind her, dock pilings disappearing into flat water, a single moored fishing vessel with a rust-streaked hull, wet concrete apron reflecting the pale sky in an unbroken mirror strip between wall and water — second onigiri half-eaten, paper wrapping folded back — she has stopped chewing, looking at something across the harbor she hasn't named yet
Salted salmon. Dense rice. The overshirt on for the breeze.
Two salted salmon onigiri in white paper wrappers, one half-unwrapped, dense rice visible, resting on stone wall
A small thing, and correct.
What she wore
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I took the bus in the linen trousers because the coast road gets a breeze and I already knew I'd be sitting in that bus for longer than I'd planned, watching the water come close to the road.
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I changed into the skirt before going inside — there was tatami and I wanted to feel the floor properly, and the trousers would've felt like the wrong shape for a room that old.
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The overshirt went on for the walk back — the rain had softened everything and I wasn't cold but I wanted the layer, the weight of it, sitting on that wall eating rice out of paper while the harbour did nothing in particular.